@davidfrenchjag.bsky.social
NYT Columnist, visiting professor at Lipscomb University. Married to @nancyfrench.bsky.social. Iraq vet, Grizzlies fan, born in War Eagle Country and raised in Big Blue Nation.
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.social"How do we know what courage is? When we see a man risk himself to care for another person, that’s courage. The legal judgment may be uncertain, but the moral verdict is already in. On the most traumatic night in a young woman’s life, a good man could not be found." www.nytimes.com/2026/10/11/o...
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.social"Here’s one way to think of Paxton — he possesses all of Donald Trump’s corruption and none of Trump’s charisma."
My dispatch from the most important Senate race in America: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/04/o...
@daviddesteno.bsky.socialReposted by @davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialWith the midterm elections coming, I was honored to chat with @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social & Jeffrey Rosen about what role, if any, the Founders thought religion should play in public life & the cultivation of virtue, and whether we're living up to that view. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...
@kschake.bsky.socialReposted by @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social"when Hegseth cuts off soldiers from reporters, he isn’t just silencing reporters, he’s silencing soldiers. He’s suppressing the stories of the most meaningful and dangerous and traumatic moments of their lives.” @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialTransparency is part of the process of democratic governance. It’s irritating for leaders, but indispensable for democracies. It’s what permits the electorate to understand the truth about the wars they’re asked to support and to fight. And it’s what binds the people to the armies that serve them.
@dennislytton.bsky.socialReposted by @davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialMy father's ancestors are mostly pre-revolutionary, my mother emigrated from the Philippines. Take inspiration from *and* be critical of your ancestors, French argues. The right's call for a kind of Herrenvolk country is against everything we should believe in.
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialGratitude, humility, responsibility: Those are the virtues our overlapping histories should instill. But the new right turns that upside-down. It replaces gratitude with a sense of entitlement, humility with arrogance, and a sense of duty with the will to power and the right to dominate.
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialThe new right calls conservatives like me "supine beautiful losers." But when I look at the picture Bo French hates, I see something beautiful. I do not see anyone losing. I see a nation created by an idea — that all men are created equal — that serves as a magnet for people all over the world.
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.social"The corrupt machinations of the Missouri case reveal that MAGA’s perfidy is limited only by its creativity. And while we keep dodging MAGA’s legal bullets, I fear that it is only a matter of time before one hits." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/o...
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialTo the post-9/11 vets: You fought with honor. You defended the innocent. Time and again you confronted and defeated an opponent that could be every bit as evil as the Nazis your grandfathers vanquished. And you accomplished the one mission that is core to your identity — you kept America safe.
@kschake.bsky.socialReposted by @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social"The long-term threat is to the character and competence of the armed forces. They are becoming politicized, and the politicization of a military can both destroy its combat effectiveness and turn it into an instrument of domestic oppression.” @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialIt is difficult to fathom the damage President Trump is doing to America’s national security. He is making our nation more vulnerable than it has been at any time since the cloudiest days of the Cold War. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/o...
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.social"The idea that protecting provocative speech by visitors and immigrants renders the Constitution a “suicide pact” might be one of the most absurd examples of snowflakery I’ve ever seen in my life." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/o...
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialA love of liberty cannot cloud our moral judgment. Nazis may have a right to march through Skokie, Ill., but they are still Nazis.
Many in the anti-woke movement, however, changed this calculus. Rather than defend principles, they embraced and weaponized extremists. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/o...
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.social"JD Vance doesn’t think our nation is Christian enough to be truly free. Your faithlessness has broken the social compact, and now it is time for the government to seize greater control." www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/o...
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialThanks for having me!
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialThe initial American strategy failed, the war with Iran is consuming the region, Iran and Ukraine are risking a face-off, both Russia and China are escalating their military commitments, American munitions are dwindling and Trump is raging. Other than that, everything is fine.
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialWhen many young people look at the church’s embrace of Trump, they’re not rejecting the church because they’re afraid to shed their sin and become better people. They’re rejecting the church because they refuse to embrace sin and become, well, worse people. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/o...
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialThe 2020 playbook is unfolding now, and I’m concerned, to put it mildly, that Mike Johnson is no Mike Pence. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/o...
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.socialGOP devotion to the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, is in some ways even more troubling than their continued support for Trump. Their enthusiasm for a another corrupt adulterer shows that Christian moral compromise is metastasizing. They love their corrupt politicians, so long as they fight.
